


Dinosaurs

by TriplePirouette



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriplePirouette/pseuds/TriplePirouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Dinosaurs. "There were times Gold thought about his former life as a lame spinner with nostalgia."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinosaurs

 There were times Gold thought about his former life as a lame spinner with nostalgia. He liked his little modest home. He liked the way spinning wool could calm him. He'd liked his wife before she left. He'd liked his life the way it was before the Queen brought this hell upon them.

 

But when he thought of his son, his heart ached and felt like it was going to shatter.

 

Because he always thought of things Bae would have liked in this world.

 

Today it was Dinosaurs. Gold picked up the tiny plastic dinosaur on the street that he had almost tripped on. He rolled it over in his hand, letting his fingers roam over the cheap, rough plastic of the small child's toy.

 

Bae had always been infatuated with dragons, and in this place, dinosaurs were the closest thing. Though this world knew much more about dinosaurs than they ever did about dragons. There were bones and skeletons and preserved specimens, books upon books upon books about the different types, art and sketches and computer models of what they might have looked like... the amount of knowledge that this civilization had collected about many things, but especially things that were extinct astounded him.

 

And movies- oh the movies... movies about happy cartoon dinosaurs and viscous reptilian beats and amazing computer graphics of the beasts that seemed so life like you could reach out and touch them. There were even amusement parks (not that they could have gone, but the idea was there none the less) where you could walk among statues of them, great statues built to scale. It boggled his mind.

 

Bae would have so loved dinosaurs. Pterodactyls might have been his favorite because they could fly like dragons. Maybe triceratops because of the horns, or the great tyrannosaurus rex because he was so fascinating.

 

There were so many beautiful things that Gold could have shown his son in this world, so many things that they could have shared, so many things that he would have loved to teach him.

 

All magic came with a price. The price for his power was his son.

 

He pocketed the small trinket and squeezed it tight. Gold was used to the bittersweet pain of remembering. He closed his eyes and could clearly see Bae's face, so young, so headstrong. Just for a second, he thought about what it would be like to tell him about dinosaurs, and how Bae would smile at him in wonder.

 

“Hey, Mr. Gold, are you ok?”

 

The young male voice knocks his daydream sideways and he blinks opens his eyes to see Henry Mills standing before him. “Yes, Henry. Thank you for your concern, but I was just thinking.” He forces a smile at the boy who reminds him more of Bae than he'd like to admit.

 

Henry looks like there's something he wants to say on the tip of his tongue, but he just presses a smile to his lips. “Ok, then. Have a good day.” He wraps his arms around his book just a little tighter and passes Gold, his own thoughts tilting his small head as he moves down the street.

 

“Henry!” Gold calls, unable to quell the impulse.

 

“Hum?” Henry turns, the questioning sound just behind his pursed lips.

 

Gold takes two limping steps forward to the boy, his cane tapping lightly on the pavement of the sidewalk. His face softens, a smile just at the corners of his eyes. “Do you...like dinosaurs?”

 

Henry smiles and shrugs. “Well, yeah. Who doesn't?”

 

Gold nods, pulling the small plastic toy from his pocket. “Found this. I was just going to throw it away but...” Gold holds it out to the boy, “Perhaps you'd like it?”

 

Henry takes a bit longer than is strictly polite to look between Gold's face and the tiny toy raptor he holds in the flat palm of his hand. “Yeah,” he says, holding his own hand out and letting Gold deftly place the animal on it's feet on his fingers. Henry looks at it closer, and smiles up at gold. “Thanks.”

 

Henry turns and continues his walk down the street, Gold watching until he turns a corner and is out of sight.

 

There were times Gold thought about his former life as a lame spinner with nostalgia, but there were many, many things he did not miss about it: the isolation, the cowardice, the poverty. The one thing that never wavered, never changed, was the way his heart clenched and his hand shook when he thought about the way Bae looked at him after he'd taken on the Dark Magic.

 

Gold closed his eyes for a second before turning back to the direction he was going, the even sound of his cane on the pavement centering him. But oh, how Bae would have loved dinosaurs.

 

 


End file.
